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From: dep@allegra.UUCP (Dewayne Perry)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: RE: Live performances
Message-ID: <3089@allegra.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Feb-85 16:05:46 EST
Article-I.D.: allegra.3089
Posted: Tue Feb 26 16:05:46 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Feb-85 12:51:19 EST
References: <270@lcuxc.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 61

[of course, i prefer my lines live]

I must grant you that sitting down to an evening of cds and lps
is a lot easier than trundling into the city to see a live 
performance, but there are a lot of compensating factors.

Las Friday, we went into the city (New York City in this case)
to see Die Meistersinger at the Met.  To give you a feeling for
the magnitude of this undertaking: we left home at 4pm (we live
about 25 miles west of the city), shot down rt 24 past Newark
airport, over the Pulaski Skyway (the Popes road to heaven),
snaked our way through the backroads of Jersey City in order
to avoid the pileup at the Lincoln Tunnel, through the tunnel
after having barely excaped with our skin from arrogant bus 
drivers who refused to merge with the "little" traffic, up tenth
avenue and slickly into a free parking spot (thereby saving
13 dollars) right around the corner from the met - all in one
hour, good time indeed (once I was trapped in the lincold tunnel
for 45 minutes). All in all, a great deal of pain.

The performance started at 6:30 and lasted until midnight (with
all the curtain calls) and we returned home at about 12:40.
An evening of over eight and one-half hours!!  BUT, I'll do
it again, anytime.

Some advantages of the live performance:

   1.  Even with a very good high fidelity system, the sound
       in the concert hall is better.

   2.  While this was an opera and obviously the visual aspects
       important, the same holds true of instrumental concerts
       as well.  With opera, the theater is equally important
       with the music (and of course the dance parts dont come
       through very well, even on the cds) and Beckmessers antics
       are delightful.

   3.  The live performance demands (and sometimes recieves)
       active participation on the part of the audience.  You
       dont have the option of getting a snack, reading a book,
       etc, or in general ignoring what is going on which you
       can easily and often do with your home music system.
       In return you get part of the electricity that is so
       often absent from recordings - even when the performance
       is merely a good one, not even a spectacular one.

   4.  You have a greater understanding and appreciation for the
       physical aspects/demands on the artists that are incurred
       by the live performance.  I felt for Peter Hoffmann when
       he got a bit wobbly on his high notes in the prize song.
       I get wobblier than that, without having sung the previous
       five hours of the opera.

All in all, live performances are the next best thing to doing
the actual performances yourselves.  Recordings are yet one more
remove from the real thing.

Enjoy - Dewayne